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<h1>RBNB&#8482; Web Access Portal Help</h1>
<h2>May 21st, 2002</h2>
<h2>Copyright <a href="http://www.creare.com">Creare</a>, Inc.</h2>

<hr class="sectionbreak">
<h2><a NAME="TOC"></a>Table of Contents</h2>

<ul class="leftpad">
	<li><a href="#Introduction">Introduction</a></li>
	<li><a href="#ServerAddress">Server/Channel Selection</a></li>
	<li><a href="#RequestOptions">Request Options</a></li>
	<li><a href="#ReleaseNotes">Release Notes</a></li>
</ul>

<hr class="sectionbreak">
<h2><a NAME="Introduction"></a>Introduction</h2>
<p class="justified">
Welcome to Creare's Web Access Portal!&nbsp; This software
allows you to view RBNB channels via your webbrowser.&nbsp; Simply click on
the channel you are interested in, and it will be displayed.&nbsp; If the 
channel has an extension with a MIME type (such as .jpg), the channel will be 
shown by that type; otherwise, plain text is used.&nbsp; This technology is
powered by JSP and Servlets running on a Tomcat servlet host.</p>
<p class="justified">
For more information on RBNB technology, visit <a href=
"http://outlet.creare.com/rbnb">RBNB Home</a>.&nbsp; For more information about
servlets, please see Sun's informative white papers located <a href=
"http://java.sun.com/products/servlet/index.html">here</a>.&nbsp; For JSP, 
<a href="http://java.sun.com/products/jsp/index.html">here</a>.&nbsp; Lastly,
for more information about the Tomcat project, a subset of the Jakarta effort,
visit their homepage,
<a href="http://jakarta.apache.org">jakarta.apache.org</a>.
</p>
<hr class="sectionbreak">
<h2><a NAME="ServerAddress"></a>Server/Channel Selection</h2>
<p class="justified">
	The options in this portion of the form determine what entries are 
displayed in the list to the right of the form.
</p>

<h3>RBNB Address</h3>
<p class="justified">
The header form has a field that allows you to enter the Internet 
Address of the RBNB to which you wish to connect.&nbsp; Be aware that the 
server which your browser is talking to determines the connectivity of this
form; that is, if a webserver is running the WebAccess servlet at Creare, it
will not be able to see an RBNB running behind your firewall.</p>

<h3>Channel Match</h3>
<p class="justified">
	The Channel Match field specifies which channels available on the connected
server are listed in the summary to the left.&nbsp; The default is the ellipsis, 
"...", which means to include all channels recursively from the root.&nbsp; You 
may specify "[Source]/...", where [Source] is the name of a data source 
connected to the RBNB.&nbsp; As of this writing, the use of "..." on lower 
channel levels is not implemented.
</p>

<h3>Keyword Match</h3>
<p class="justified">
	The keyword match allows the user to specify that only channels which 
contain the specified keywords, separated by spaces, within their meta-data
should be displayed.&nbsp; This implies that the meta-data needs to be text.
</p>
<p class="justified">
	If this field is blank, no search is performed.
</p>

<hr class="sectionbreak">

<h2><a NAME="RequestOptions"></a>Request Options</h2>
<p class="justified">
	The options within this section of the form determine which data the server
fetches when the user presses a link.</p>

<h3>Meta or Source Data</h3>
<p class="justified">
	This field allows you to select between Meta Data, static data stored on the
server in its registration map, or Source Data, dynamic data stored in the ring
buffer.&nbsp; If meta data is selected, the next three options (Start, Duration,
and Reference) do not apply.
</p>

<h3>Start</h3>
<p class="justified">
	The Start field allows you to enter a time value at which the data 
should be acquired. The default units for time is seconds, but can be whatever
 the data source specified (e.g. incremental counts).&nbsp; The "Reference" 
 value further modifies how time is interpreted (see below). </p>

<h3>Duration</h3>
<p class="justified">
	The Duration field determines the amount of data to fetch, in source-units
(e.g. in seconds).&nbsp; A value of 0 is a special case, signifying that the 
single last point (object) of data is to be returned.</p>

<h3>Reference</h3>
<p class="justified">
	The Reference field determines how the Start and Duration fields are 
interpreted, as follows:
<ul>
	  	<li>"absolute" -- The start time is interpreted as given by the source 
		without modification.&nbsp; The default is absolute time in seconds from
	  	midnight, Jan 1st, 1970 UTC.</li>
	  	<li>"newest" -- The start parameter is measured relative to the 
	  	most recent data available in the server.&nbsp; Therefore, start = 0
		means current data.</li>
	  	<li>"oldest" -- The start parameter is measured relative to the oldest
		data available in the server.&nbsp; Therefore, start = 0 means the
		beginning of the data.</li>
	  	<li>"after" -- Return the newest data available, but only the portion
		after the specified start time.&nbsp; This means you may get a fraction
		of the duration amount.
				
<!--		A combination between "absolute" and "newest",
	  		this flag causes the server to return the newest
	  		data available after the specified start time.  Unlike
	  		"newest", you do not have to request the data to 
	  		find out that you already have it.  Unlike "absolute",
	  		a gap may be inserted in the data to provide you with 
	  		the freshest data.
			--></li>
	  	<li>"modified" -- Similar to "after", but it will return a full 
		duration amount of data if any part of the data is after the specified 
		start time. 

		<!--  Similar to "after", but attempts to return
	  	a <i>duration's</i> worth of data in a contiguous block.
	  	If the data is not available after the <code>start</code>
	  	time, it will be taken from before the start time.  --> </li>
</ul></p>

<h3>Via PlugIn</h3>
<p class="justified">
	This field allows you to filter through a PlugIn any channels you select.
&nbsp;A popular selection is the PNGPlugIn, which displays time domain vector
data as a plot in the Portable Network Graphic format.</p>

<hr class="sectionbreak">
<h2><a NAME="ReleaseNotes"></a>Release Notes</h2>
<div class="justified">
<h3>Updates and Fixes</h3>
<h4>Version 0.1, December 5th, 2001</h4>
<p>	First release.</p>
<h4>Version 0.2, December 5th, 2001</h4>
<p>	Removed version field; no longer supports V1.0 RBNBs.</p>
<h4>Version 0.5, May 21st, 2002</h4>
<p> Added folder display, keyword matching options.
<h3>Known Bugs</h3>
<p>	Currently, RBNB channels with question marks, ampersands, 
percent signs, or other characters with special meaning in URLs are not 
correctly displayed by this Servlet.</p>
</div>
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